Yorktown Battlefield

On the fields around Yorktown in October 1781, the American Revolution was effectively won. A combined American and French army trapped Lord Cornwallis against the York River while a French fleet sealed off escape by sea, and after a relentless siege the British surrendered an entire army. The defeat shattered Britain's will to continue the war and opened the road to the Treaty of Paris and independence. Few battlefields can claim to have decided the fate of a nation so completely.

In the summer of 1781 Lord Cornwallis fortified Yorktown, a tobacco port on the York River, expecting resupply and reinforcement by the Royal Navy. Washington, joined by the French army under the Comte de Rochambeau, saw his chance and marched swiftly south from New York. The decisive stroke came at sea: on September 5, Admiral de Grasse's French fleet defeated the British in the Battle of the Chesapeake, cutting Cornwallis off from rescue or escape.

The formal siege opened on September 28, 1781, as some 17,000 American and French troops surrounded roughly 8,000 defenders and dug parallel trenches ever closer to the British works. On the night of October 14, two key strongpoints, Redoubts 9 and 10, were stormed with the bayonet — Alexander Hamilton leading the American column against Redoubt 10. With the redoubts taken, allied artillery could pound the town at point-blank range.

His position hopeless, Cornwallis asked for terms, and on October 19, 1781, about 8,000 British and Hessian soldiers marched out to surrender — by tradition to the tune 'The World Turned Upside Down.' It was the last major battle of the Revolution in North America. Word of the disaster toppled the British government's resolve, and the 1783 Treaty of Paris recognized the United States. The ground is preserved today within Colonial National Historical Park.